Friends of the Phonograph
celebrate the Phonograph's birthday on December 6 to mark the December
6, 1877 event at Edison's Menlo Park, New Jersey Laboratory when Thomas
Alva Edison's Phonograph was said to be "finished" (1)
and ready to be heard by the world. On the next day the infant invention
was taken to the
offices of Scientific American where the Phonograph introduced
itself. This wonderous debut for the machine Edison would
later call his "favorite invention" and his
"baby"(2), was
subsequently described in the December 22, 1877 issue of Scientific
American.

The creation of Edison's
Phonograph has other dates worth noting, but for Friends of the
Phonograph December 6 is the day to sing "Happy Birthday
to the Phonograph."

Edison billboard outside
Menlo Park, New Jersey, circa 1908

The
Phonograph's Birthday Timeline

Edison's phonograph timeline
includes other important dates besides December 6, some of which have
also been cited in various calendars and books as the birthday of
the Phonograph.

The following historic
markers are dates related to the Phonograph's conception, telephonic
repeater experiments, tin foil phonograph construction, testing, demonstrations
and patents. Two contemporary references to dates assigned by postal
services (first day of issue stamps) honoring the 100 year anniversary
of Edison's recording efforts in 1877 are also identified.

April 30, 1877 -
Charles Cros submits a sealed envelope containing a letter to the
Academy of Sciences in Paris explaining his proposed method for recording
and reproducing sound. Although this envelope was not opened until
December 3, 1877, Cros should be credited "with anticipating,
though barely, what Edison was to accomplish" (12)
and describing an invention which he named the Paleophone (voix
du passé).

Phonograph historian Patrick
Feaster notes that on this date "Edison and his associates sketched
out the principle of phonographic sound" (4).

July 18, 1877 -
Edison "announces" his intention to invent the phonograph
(5)

The Thomas A. Edison Papers
Project describes the July conception of the future Phonograph as
follows (6):

In July 1877, while developing
his telephone transmitter, Edison conceived the idea of recording
and playing back telephone messages. After experimenting with a
telephone "diaphragm having an embossing point & held against paraffin
paper moving rapidly," he found that the sound "vibrations are indented
nicely" and concluded "there's no doubt that I shall be able to
store up & reproduce automatically at any future time the human
voice perfectly." Edison periodically returned to this idea, and
by the end of November, he had developed a basic design.

End of July 1877
- Edison "constructed a paraffin paper device called a telephonic
repeater" which in the "course of many experiments thought
he could hear the sound of human voices or music when the strip of
paper moved quickly beneath the spring-driven point. Inspired, he
quickly yelled "Halloo" into the crude mouthpiece, and was
completely taken aback when the machine faintly imitated him moments
later. (7)

August 12, 1877
- The Library of Congress' website America's
Story assigns this as the "date popularly given for Thomas
Edison's completion of the model for the first phonograph. (8).
See reference 7 (above).

November 29, 1877
- Basic sketch of the Phonograph completed that apparently was the
"sketch that his workman, John Kruesi, used to construct the
first tin-foil model." (9)

December 4, 1877
- "Kruesi made phonograph today." (10)

December 6, 1877 - "Kruesi
finished the phonograph." (1)

December 7, 1877
- Phonograph taken to offices of Scientific American for first
public demonstration

The Thomas A. Edison Papers
Project (11) describes the events of December
6 and 7 as follows:

"When Kruesi finished
making the phonograph Edison put on the tin foil and then recorded
the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb"; Edison's daughter Marion
was at the time nearly five years old and his eldest son was almost
two. Edison then "adjusted the reproducer and the machine reproduced
it perfectly. I never was so taken back in my life. Everybody was
astonished. I was always afraid of things that worked the first
time." Similar astonishment occurred the following day when Edison
exhibited the new invention at the offices on Scientific American."

March 23, 1977 -
First Day of Issue for Centennial of Sound Recording - US Postal Service
(see below for one of the first day covers that includes identification
of December 6, 1877 as the date Edison's first words were recorded
on his Phonograph).

July 20, 1977 -
First Day of Issue for 100 Years of Phonograph - India Postal Service

Above - Thomas Edison seated
with his "Brady" tin-foil Phonograph, April 18, 1878. Standing
left to right are Uriah Painter and Charles Batchelor.

(5) Edison Cylinder Records
1889-1912, Allen Koenigsberg p. xi - "But Edison, as early as
July 18, 1877, had already discovered the basic principle of the phonograph,
and mentioned it almost in passing on a laboratory work sheet. Edison
was concerned at the time with developing a cheap and efficient method
of transferring telegraph signals from station to station. He conceived
an automatic electro-mechanical device and built both cyulinder and
disc models. As he later recalled it was his hearing difficult which
caused him to attach a sharp point to a telephone diaphragm and the
vibrations actually caused the point to prick his finger. He then
reasoned that the mechanical force of the diaphragm would be equivalent
to the electrical embossing point of the telegraph apparatus. By the
end of July he had constructed a paraffin paper deviced called a telephonic
repeater, and immediately filed for a patent in Greta Britain."

(9) Edison Cylinder Records
1889-1912, Allen Koenigsberg p. xii ""apprently this sketch
that his workman, John Kruesi, used to construct the first tin-foil
model."

(10) Edison Cylinder Records
1889-1912, Allen Koenigsberg p. xii ""Kruesi made phonograph
today.", as recorded in the diary of Charles Batchelor, one of
Edison's aides.

(11) Rutgers - http://edison.rutgers.edu/tinfoil.htm
- The Thomas A. Edison Papers Project is co-sponsored by Rutgers,
the State University of New Jersey, the National Park Service, the
New Jersey Historical Commission, and the Smithsonian Institution.

(12) Charles Cros, for
his due credit as described in “The Talking Machine”, p. 9, by Timothy
C. Fabrizio and George F. Paul